Oil Spill in New Orleans

While President Bush and Senator McCain continue pressuring Congress and the country to feed our oil addiction by supporting their ten year plan to drill for oil in the risky Gulf of Mexico and the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the reality of oil drilling hits home once again.

No one will forget the terrible oil spills that occurred on two coasts at the same time back in November of 2007. California was spending millions of dollars cleaning oil off of the feather of birds and out of the ocean water after a shipped leaked 58,000 gallons of fuel. Their fishing industry was hit hard by the spill. At the same time, the Black Sea was truly black when an injured Chinese tanker dumped oil into its waters.

Now Mississippi and Louisiana are suffering from an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has shut down the Mississippi River and seriously damaged valuable wetlands. About 419,000 gallons of oil were dumped into the Gulf waters right at the mouth of the Mississippi River when a barge and a tanker collided on Wednesday. The result of the oil spill was the halting of supertankers, grain barges and other ships that use the River to deliver goods farther north. Currently, over 800 workers are using containment booms, skimmers and other equipment to try to scrub the oil out of the sea water.